The mirror revealed the wearings of those tired precipitous hours:on my cheeks and chin,in the fine arteries of my eyes,in the bent fabric of my shirt:six o'clock—with hours more.I went outside to rest near the tree lineto delay, to ruminate, to deliquesce:

The days are not restful, I thought to myself.

(Remind me, Terrence, what to drinkwhen to think is not pleasurable.)

We were all gods in the morningseeing the world through a fresh mist,and immaterial was whether our demeanors were crisp —alert— or languid; we were inside the swaying of our eyes,as sudden, as sharp, as the cut of a soldier's salute.

The morning came from mist,from nothing but the night we cannot remember.Coming, there was daybreakand now, again, a remanding dusk.

The days are brief.Soon I will be in a one-room apartmentwith broken tile and no carpetlooking at my reflection in a windowpane andseeing a box fan pull cigarette smoke out of the air.I will think of a certain Durham player's piano songand then of a girl I watched turn in pain on a hospital bedand grab in her slumber at the buttonthat put morphine into her small body.I will mutter with somewhat intoxicated breath,"that's a memory of five years"—a fifteenth of a full life.

In that morning we were gods,or creatures of God,and we have gone into a new nighttimenot admitting a pleasant afternoon.

When I walk up the stairs, I'll hear the bellswithin the chapel clock ringing—they'll remind me that I believe in numinous things, andtime, a human's broadest concept.

On given nights I will hasten to sleep;on others I'll sit at a window and concoctverse such as this:

Through a Lit Window on Lee Avenue

There are only a few couples on the sidewalk,a few fireflies in the ferns,the clink of toy windchimes as the fan passes over them—or less with the breeze—a few brown marks on the windowsillfrom cigarettes left to burnby me and those who resided here before.

There are memories now, of boats on lakes, of cold March waterand desperate swimming;of unexpected midday intermezzoswith girls like the few who walkon sidewalks with fireflies.There are memories now,and reflections in the glass of frames.

There are sailboats:

There are books:

There is music played at a lingering, oppressive volumeand a few dreams left of fireflies and sailboats and girls.

an odd addresswith stairs and empty halls and an open fire escape,an alley with shattered bookshelves: and insidea wandering moth in framed reflections

[the moth's desperate tapping at the walls and ceiling]and otherwise the silence of a thousandsounds not worthy of note:

And we all swim on given nights,on Thursdays and the weekends,swim for our livesthrough the watchwords of our youthful mass:

the ambitious, the smart, the beautiful, the drunk.

(Remind me, Terrence, what to drinkwhen to think is not pleasurable.)

While swimming we don't wait;in pitchers our lives have already begun;around a table we belong aboard the coming realitysoon structured by the mass which, whennot around the table, waits for life to begin.We are in favor, in love, have completed somethingthat means anything to any future.The table is the center of the noisy air of promiseand pledges the faintest, untrusted pleasures.

In short hours I will sit there;and that table will be result.And this lawn is the incubator of the dream of promise, favor, end, and love.

The chapel bells were far from that lawnand could not there announce time or our greater father—

but chapel bells only called us back sooner,and the memories of both, unannounced, would be refreshed in due course.

There would be remorse fornot reminding myself sooner,

because there were hours left that nightor less if I rushedand watered adventures of promiselike I haven't had in years since.

And now I am in my office,and I am old . . .-er and rested.And human dreams and numinous thingsare nearer, clearer, tested.